


Secret Spaces

by jujubeans



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angsty John, Gen, John-centric, Nostalgia, Post-Reichenbach, Sad John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:05:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4533678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubeans/pseuds/jujubeans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall, John tries one last time to come to terms with the loss of Sherlock.  He visits Sherlock's childhood bedroom and finds more than he imagines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Melancholy at the moment, and this has leeched into my scribblings. This one's been on my mind for a while. Hope you enjoy.

“Thank you for allowing me to do this, Mrs Holmes. I hope it doesn’t stir up anything upsetting for you both.”

“It’s no bother, John. We understand completely. I’m just not sure if you’ve really thought about how you’re going to feel going in there, though. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’ve- I’ve tried _everything_ I can think of over the last two years to come to terms with what happened, but I’m just…” John shrugged, the most sadly helpless look on his face, “… _stuck_.” 

Mrs Holmes hummed gently in sympathy. “Well, here it is. Take as long as you need, dear. We’ll be downstairs when you’re done.” She patted John’s arm and took her leave.

John stood in front of the door to Sherlock’s childhood bedroom. He reached out with one hand and laid it flat on the dark wooden panelling. After a few moments he shuffled forward and rested his forehead on the back of his hand, his other reaching out to rest on the ornate brass door handle. _“I hope this is OK with you, Sherlock,”_ John breathed as he sucked in a deep one, stood to attention, and pushed down on the handle.

The door swung silently to reveal a room that seemed more suited to a middle-aged man’s study than a young child’s room. The size, for one thing – it was enormous, _at least three times_ as large as their sitting room and kitchen in Baker Street put together. Certainly not a space you could ever call ‘cosy’. 

The colour scheme, for another. As with the rest of the house, the room was panelled in a dark wainscoting that seemed inappropriate for a child. Dark and severe, unwelcoming, uncomforting. How could a little child feel comfortable waking up in this room? John wondered what Sherlock looked like as a wee-one. Lots of unruly dark curls and pale skin, he guessed. _Brilliant deduction, John,_ he mused, wryly. 

John quietly closed the door and wandered forward until he was standing in the centre of the space and let his gaze slide to the left. At the far end of the room one entire wall was covered floor to ceiling with entomological and zoological cabinets. A railed ladder sat at the right-hand end in front of the glass-fronted cabinets.

At the left end, along the adjacent wall sat an enormous desk covered in papers and books. Pigeonholes and drawers covered the wall above the desk, all filled with objects, scrolls and sheaves of paper. The desk itself sported several deep drawers on either side of the leg space, all with locks. 

Alongside the desk sat a full-sized laboratory bench. This was topped with scientific equipment.

John swung his head to the right. In keeping with the oversized theme, a mammoth four poster bed sat against the centre of the exterior wall. Dark green brocade fabric and tassels hung from the canopy, so dark it looked almost liquorice. Adjacent, on the wall neighbouring the next room sat a cold fireplace with two armchairs circled in front of it. _Just like Baker Street,_ John mused. Adjacent to this again, on the hallway wall, sat floor to ceiling bookshelves, again with a railed ladder. A giant wardrobe completed the furniture.

Five minutes had passed since John entered the room. He hesitantly moved toward the bookshelf, cricking his neck to read the spines: anatomy, biology, chemistry, forensics, modern and ancient diseases, Islamic medicine, Greek medicine, true crime, Modesty Blaise – wait, _what?!_ John’s eyebrows shot into the stratosphere. Sherlock read a Modesty Blaise? John wouldn’t have thought Sherlock would have ever read anything fiction, except perhaps for Shakespeare or Dickens, or other such writers. But Modesty Blaise… oh how John wished he could ask him about how that book came to be on his shelf. Perhaps it was Willie Garvin’s attention to the detail and history of his weapons and inventions that interested Sherlock? He wondered if it had even still been in his memory palace or if it had been deemed useless and deleted.

John avoided the rest of this end of the room and headed toward the lab bench. Wooden racks of dusty test tubes tinkled as John touched them. They hung in rows along with tongs, beakers, Erlenmeyer and volumetric flasks, lamps, burners, a beaker of pencils, retort stands, gauze mats and, to the side, a box of matches. John picked up the matches and rattled the box. He slid out the cardboard drawer to find only one live match left in the nest amongst its burnt brethren. 

Replacing the box John moved on to the desk. Of all the furniture in the room it looked like Sherlock spent most of his time here. The seat was well worn, the surface of the desk also well-used. Peering into the pigeonholes John noticed a Rubik’s cube, set into a deliberate coloured pattern. Other holes sported a deck of cards, three squash balls, dictionaries in various languages (well thumbed), another beaker - this time full of scalpels, empty sample jars, and bug catching equipment. In a tall, narrow slot stood a small collection of records – Chopin, Corelli, Dvořák, Vivaldi. Next space to this held a box of blank cassette tapes, labelled in Sherlock’s handwriting with such titles as “Findings, Pollen”, “Results, September 1994” and “Verbal notes due to broken wrist, 1990 – to be transcribed”.

John tried the drawers to the desk but they were all locked. He moved on to the entomological cabinets. The wide, shallow wooden drawers moved smoothly on their runners. John started opening drawers at random. The first held little jars, the type used for jam samples people brought back from holidays as gifts. Each jar had been painstakingly sterilised, labels removed. Three rows of them sat in the foam-lined drawer, all filled with honey. John walked to the window and opened the heavy curtains allowing light to spill into the room. He returned to the drawer and noticed how the sun revealed a rainbow of amber and caramel hues across the collection. In front of each wee jar was a hand-written label displaying date and floral source for the honey. John could see a wide range including heather, borage, apple blossom, hawthorn and surprisingly, Manuka, which John thought was only from New Zealand. 

One drawer across held more of the same wee jars, this time, inverted. Sherlock had used the upturned lids to cement a piece of foam that mounted the minuten, pinning a beautifully perfect example of a bee. The jars had then been screwed over these like little glass cabinets. The jars were sitting in slightly recessed foam, again with hand-written data labels.

The next few drawers held expected items such as chemicals, pipettes, droppers, powders, gums and various other items for experimentation.

The following drawers held Sherlock’s insect collections: butterflies, moths, thrips, and beetles of all kinds, dried worms and millipedes - all exquisite examples, beautifully preserved, pinned, arranged and labelled. John could only imagine the hours and hours of work required to capture, preserve and catalogue a collection this extensive. Was Sherlock ever taken to play with other children? Looking at this room he guessed not. 

John chose another drawer at random, this time lower down. Recessed into foam was a ¾ size violin and bow. This must have been Sherlock’s learning instrument. Very carefully John stretched his hand toward the drawer and curled his fingers around the neck, letting his fingertips come to rest on the strings as he drew it toward him. Cradling it to his chest he let the fingers of his other hand run across the grain of the wood of the body. The panels were varnished a deep reddy-brown with tiger-like stripes in the grain. Sherlock must have been very small when he began lessons. John plucked a couple of strings. They were very loose and made a plonking sound into the silence. John smiled, remembering how Sherlock enjoyed annoying Mycroft this way.

Reluctantly, John returned the violin to the foam and quietly closed the drawer. He tried the one below and saw something even more unexpected – a well-worn edition of the game, ‘Operation’. A bark of laughter shot out of John’s mouth as he pictured Sherlock and Mycroft hunched over the ‘operating table’, trying to out-do each other on steadiness of hand as they removed kidneys, liver and lungs. A gruesome yet fitting game for the Holmes children.

He rifled through less interesting finds until he came to a drawer holding a perfectly clean child-sized plaster cast. John remembered the cassette tape labelled, “verbal notes due to broken wrist, 1990 – to be transcribed”. This must be the cast from that break. If John needed anything to further illustrate Sherlock’s isolation from his childhood peers, this would be it. A perfectly clean cast. Not one single signature, rude drawing or risqué message from school friends. No messages of ‘get well soon’ or smiley faces. Just endless white plaster. John could feel himself getting angry and upset. All the times he’d become cranky at Sherlock when he thought he wouldn’t try to get along with people. All the times John had thought Sherlock was deliberately being obtuse in social situations. How would Sherlock even know _HOW_ to behave in company? His family had him cloistered away in here with only bloody Mycroft for company – hardly a shining example of socialisation. It was obvious that they’d bought every scientific item Sherlock could ever want for his experiments, but didn’t they wonder why he dwelled in here? Didn’t they consider balancing study with social time? 

John’s heart broke for the little boy who knew only isolation, who as a result, threw himself into observation rather than interaction. John looked down at the beetles and worms – the dates implied they were Sherlock’s earliest examples of observation and collation. He shook his head as he thought of how Sherlock had moved from observation of beetles’ habitat and behaviour to the same observation of human beings and their behaviour. Sherlock had certainly made the most of being on the outside, creating a career for himself out of the ashes of his childhood.

John reached up and wiped a tear that had tracked its way down his cheek. He swiped his fingers across the leg of his trousers and was shocked to realise he was sitting on Sherlock’s bed. He looked up at the green brocade and wondered whether Sherlock lay here wishing for friendship and laughter, or whether he’d trained those wishes out of himself. Nervously, John settled himself on his back and gazed up at the canopy. 

The bed was bloody enormous, like everything else in the room. It would have engulfed Sherlock until his lanky body grew into it. John’s mind drifted. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of the sheer bloody misery of the past two years. He’d thought the pain of losing his best friend would have softened over time but if anything, it had strengthened, highlighting his own isolation, loneliness and despair. How was he going to get through? 

John had made this desperate move, asking Sherlock’s parents if he could visit to see if he could gain some kind of understanding, a bit of peace, what the professionals now termed ‘closure’. He wasn’t altogether sure it was the right move now. All he could feel was _more_. _More_ saddened. _More_ angry. _More_ frustrated at what a total and utter waste Sherlock’s death had been. 

He blinked open his eyes. Anger drew itself to the fore. John squinted into the canopy, realising he was looking at a tiny carving of the initials, _S.H._ John stood on the mattress and peered into the gloom of the canopy – yes, Sherlock had carved his initials into the wooden frame of the structure. John ran his fingers over the letters, knowing Sherlock would have done the same when he carved them. In a fit of emotion, he covered the initials with his palm, wrapping his fingers around the frame and gripping tight. He felt a sharp poke at the base of his knuckles. He removed his hand and stood on tiptoe to find a small nook carved away on the side of the frame above the initials. Tucked inside was a small, ornate key. John’s heart skipped a beat. Here was something of Sherlock’s that was private, that no one else knew about. A tiny space that held one of Sherlock’s secrets. John whispered his fingertips over the key.

Gingerly, John lowered himself to the mattress and sat. Of course Sherlock would have secreted things in this room. With a brother like Mycroft he would have needed to create secret spaces for things he wished to keep private. John thought of all the times he’d watched Sherlock search a crime scene after the body had been removed. The way he’d methodically made his way around the room feeling under windowsills, around curtain rails and bed frames. How many times had John watched his methods? John could now apply those methods to Sherlock’s room. But should he? Should he just leave Sherlock’s privacy alone? Would he mind John finding anything he’d squirrelled away?

John thought about why he was here – to learn every last thing he could about Sherlock before trying to move through his loss and on to the next stage of his life. He jumped up and reverently removed the little key from its nook. It could only belong to the drawers of the desk. He scuttled over to the desk to try one of the drawers – no luck. Just in case, he tried all of the other locked drawers – nothing. Damn. 

OK, time to methodically search the room. The key had to be for somewhere. He started near the doorway and worked in a clockwise direction, searching the doorframe, skirting boards, bench edges, picture rails, checked drawers for false bottoms and things stuck to backs and bottoms of drawers, he looked behind pictures, behind the bedhead, feeling around the fireplace for catches or recessed compartments. He found several interesting things secreted in these places: a white feather, six dried leaves, a small scrap of blue fabric, a piece of hand-written sheet music, a hair clip with a small enamel flower and a dog collar with ‘Redbeard’ engraved on the tag. John moved to the huge wardrobe. He carefully felt around for false bottoms, sides etc. Just inside the frame for the doors, above his head he found another small recess carved into the wood. John went to the bench and grabbed a pencil. He used the tip to gently prize out the contents of the space into his cupped hand below. In shock, John realised he was looking at two very desiccated old spliffs. He gingerly raised one to his nose and it crumbled in mid-air. Laughing, he shook the remains into the waste basket under the bench and returned the pencil to the beaker.

It wasn’t until mid-way into the second hour that he found the keyhole. On the side of one of the two worn, velvet armchairs, underneath the tasselled edging there was a hole for the ornate key, in the wooden frame of the chair. John took a few deep breaths and tried to stop his hand shaking in order to fit the key into the lock. The key turned easily and out popped a section of the frame to display another key. John rushed over to the desk again to try the new key. Bloody buggering fuck – it fit!

He sat himself down in the leather chair to calm himself. Whatever he found inside didn’t matter. The fact he’d applied Sherlock’s methods to find the key made him feel ten feet tall. He probably could have applied Sherlock’s tuition on lock-picking to get himself into the desk, but that would have seemed like cheating, somehow.

Breathing deeply, John pulled free the first drawer. Inside were an old copy of a London A-Z, a small pouch with some twenty-five pounds and change, and a snow globe of London. The A-Z was heavily thumbed. He could just imagine Sherlock making secret trips to London to check out old crime scenes or for other nefarious reasons. John picked up the snow globe. It was an unusually sentimental purchase for Sherlock. It was no wonder he had it hidden away inside a drawer. John shook it and watched as the flakes settled over London Bridge and The Tower.

The next revealed a tape recorder, microphone and deck of blank tapes. Down the side was wedged a single tape in its own clear box, labelled “Mycroft”. John ‘s eyes widened. He removed the recorder to see if the batteries had corroded in the panel – surprisingly not. In for a penny… he inserted the Mycroft tape into the recorder and pressed ‘play’. Background hissing and popping played out until John could decipher other, more prominent sounds: grunting, huffing, a moan, the sound of fabric moving around, more huffing, another moan – oh God, John knew what this was. _Jesus Christ, Sherlock! Did you have a death wish even back then?!_ John listened as it became more and more obvious he was listening to Mycroft have a wank. It was confirmed when Sherlock must have dropped the microphone as after the thud there was complete silence, followed by a decrescendo-ing Mycroft screaming at Sherlock to _‘get back here at once!’_ and long minutes of Mycroft pounding on Sherlock’s door, demanding to be let in while Sherlock giggled into the recorder. John wondered if he should gift it to Mycroft or put it up on YouTube.

The next drawers held volume after volume of Sherlock’s journals, filled from front to back with experiments, notes, observations and sketches. He laughed at one particularly good sketch of Mycroft with the label “Cake Face”. Each year was represented, some with more than one journal. The earliest was from when Sherlock was just four. Already he was writing, making observations on his brother’s habits, his parents, beetles and insects, trees and flowers.

The last drawer held a sad little collection of birthday cards tied up with a piece of ribbon. John read through them, all having only the name “Sherlock” at the top, followed by a printed verse, and “Mummy, Dad and Mycroft” at the bottom. No personal messages. Except one. The second-last card had the usual “Sherlock” at the top but at the bottom was the message,  
“Stay strong, little brother, Mycroft, 1989”.  
This must have been the year Mycroft left for university. Sherlock had obviously re-visited this card many times as it was well-fingered and creased. The last card contained an envelope in Sherlock’s own writing. Inside was a letter telling Mycroft of experiments he had performed that year and the conclusions he’d drawn. At the end of the letter was a telling little line asking when Mycroft would be coming home to visit. John wondered why the addressed and stamped letter had never been sent. He then looked at the card it had been lying inside. It was another birthday card from Mycroft with simply “Sherlock” at the top, and “Mycroft, 1990” at the bottom. John looked at the date on the letter and the postmark on the card. The card had obviously arrived just as Sherlock was about to post the letter. Seeing the perfunctory card must have stopped Sherlock sending the letter. John’s anger expanded to include Mycroft. Four bloody extra words in the previous card made it a cherished memento. Four less and a whole relationship, such as it was, his _ONLY_ relationship, was cleft in twain.

John sighed at the tragedy. He re-tied the bundle but couldn’t bring himself to put them back into the drawer. He looked at the assembly of secret treasures lined up on the desk in front of him. He wondered if he’d ever know what they all meant. He felt like a right pillock for even being here. What did he think he was doing? Was this really going to help? He liked to think he had as much right to be here as anyone else in Sherlock’s life. He liked to think Sherlock let John know him more than he let anyone else know him – as an adult, at least. Would he mind if Sherlock went through _his_ stuff when he was dead? Who was he kidding – Sherlock had _already_ gone through all his stuff, probably more than once! He chuffed a laugh at that. Bloody git. He thought about the Mycroft tape again and the chuff turned into an outright laugh. His breath caught and it turned into a sob. There he sat, like a wet, stunned mullet, staring at his booty. “Pointless. Bloody useless, I am” he intoned, as he closed his eyes and shook his head.

“On the contrary, John. You are rarely pointless, and you have certainly _never_ been useless,” came a familiar baritone.

John’s eyes snapped open.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have time I'd love to hear what you think.  
> Juju. xx


End file.
